


Ghosts of the Past

by dovingbird



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Former Relationships, M/M, Panic Attack, Polyamory, dialogue-heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 07:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2301251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovingbird/pseuds/dovingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A filled commission. After two years of being Not-So-Grump, Danny wants to get to the bottom of why he ever was asked to do it in the first place. The answer may not be exactly what he was looking for, and where they seem to be leading may be more than he can handle right now. NOTE: I was explicitly asked not to villainize Jon in this story, so if that doesn't suit your fancy due to recent events please avoid this story. <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of the Past

Look, Danny's never been one for conflict. He's a simple guy. Always has been. He accepts what's handed to him, doesn't ask too many questions, probably trusts people a hell of a lot more than he ever should. There's a good base to them all, he decides, and they all deserve respect, yeah? What you yourself hate, do to no man and all that jazz.  
  
For example, Danny _liked_ Jon. Met him a few times when he and Ross were gearing up to do Steam Train, brushed shoulders with him when his friendship with Arin was first starting, even filmed a music video with him. Knew that they were going to be colleagues for a hella long time.  
  
And so when Arin sat Danny down one day, eyes on the floor, hands knit together so tightly that his knuckles were white, and said that Jon was stepping back to focus on his own work, that he needed to know if Danny was up for becoming a full-fledged Grump, was he shocked? Yeah. He hadn't seen it coming, though maybe he just didn't know Jon well enough to see it. It'd only been a few months, after all.  
  
It was actually kind of funny how absolutely no one in the entire Grumps franchise wanted to talk about Jon. Like...he was gone in three seconds, and it was like he'd never existed.  
  
Fourteen days after his farewell video debuted on the channel the Pacific Rim fan video – the one where Jon and Arin had been Jaeger pilots alongside Dodger and a mess of other people – appeared on Polaris's channel and, what a big surprise, Jon's channel wasn't even mentioned in the links there, even while the Grumps channel got a nice publicity boost.  
  
Barry was on his own again, of course, and when Danny came over to hang out one night and lost his phone in the couch cushions and went digging and found a hat that Barry would _never_ wear, no questions about it, he asked whose it was and was met with a long, stony silence before Barry snatched it away and wandered through the kitchen, to the laundry room at the end of it. There was a very final sound of a trashcan's lid swishing just before Barry came back, plopped down a little further away from Danny where he'd been before, and went back to watching the movie they were halfway through. And that meant it belonged to one person, of course, the man that used to live here, the man who'd disappeared to the far coast and, for all intents and purposes, probably murdered somebody while he was at it.  
  
Cue a Grumps-wide field trip to the nearest pet store for Suzy to start comparing different kinds of cat food – she was ready to bring Mochi and Mimi on an all-organic all-wet diet for their cute little health and none of the boys had been quite ready to go home after filming for the day. They'd all split up and started wandering, but when Danny emerged from one of the aisles he spotted Arin standing in front of the birds that were on display there. Danny came to stand behind him, watched as Arin smirked at him before tapping the species label – Green Cheeked Conure. “Ugly little bastards, aren't they?” he murmured. “Annoying as fuck.” And then he shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets and started off again, enough waves of negativity flowing off of him for Dan to know he wasn't allowed to follow.  
  
Just...sign after sign piling on top of each other, over and over again. But did he pull a Sherlock and start asking questions?  
  
Not on your fucking life.  
  
Well. Not at first, at least.  
  
~~  
  
Con season sucks.  
  
There's no truer piece of knowledge out there, and ever since he'd joined the Grumps it was a truth near and dear to Dan Avidan's heart.  
  
“How long do we have?” Arin asks one day as he and Dan flip absently through games, looking for the perfect one to blast through on their last two hours of steam. It's already one o'clock in the morning and there's no fucking way Dan's going home, not when there's a perfectly good couch to crash on when their energy drinks suddenly run out.  
  
“'Til what?”  
  
“MAGfest.”  
  
“Oh, fuck.” Dan tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling, trying to use it as a calendar. “Uh. What. Like, a week, maybe?”  
  
“Pfft, fuuuuck that noise.” Arin shoves the cartridges away and sighs. “You ever hate your job?”  
  
“Oh, so much. I get paid to play video games, make songs about dicks, eat all of Suzy's food...” He shakes his head. “Worst job I've ever had, for sure.”  
  
Arin snorts and collapses against the back of the couch as well. “Well. Guess I could have worse company.”  
  
“Like Ross?”  
  
“Most definitely.” Arin tilts slowly to the side. “I think I need another Monster.”  
  
Dan chuckles. “You shitting me? Dude, your kidneys love you, stop trying to kill them.”  
  
“But I'm tired!” He huffs out a sigh as he finishes his tilting, resting his head right on Danny's shoulder.  
  
Maybe a couple of months ago this would've been weird, but...no, not now. Not when he's basically lived with Arin and Ross for over a year now with the amount of time they all spend together filming. Arin and Ross have known each other for years – Ross can take full credit for teaching Arin how to use Flash, for helping him become the Egoraptor that everyone loves today – and are so playfully affectionate with each other that Danny wouldn't have survived the first few months around them if he didn't drop the whole 'no homo' panic shit and take them as they are.  
  
Besides, Arin's his best friend now, honestly, right next to Brian, and while Brian's in London Arin is right here day after day, and they've picked up so many of each other's habits that there are days Danny can't remember which of them it belonged to in the first place.  
  
So a head on his shoulder from a dude? Not weird. Not anymore.  
  
Not if it's Arin.  
  
Danny reaches up and sort of absently tugs at a few locks of Arin's hair with a smile, not quite playing with them because that'd be a little _too_ gay but just...feeling, being there, whatever. It's natural, that's all that matters to him. “You wanna call it a night, then?”  
  
“Nah. Still got some get-up-and-go in me, I think. Maybe. Possibly.”  
  
He shakes his head. “You're gonna leave Suzy up there all by herself just to record one more hour of footage?” And it's the age-old question he always ends up asking because, Jesus Christ, anybody who looks at the Scuze for two seconds is gonna fall in love with her immediately, so why the hell would Arin wanna spend time down here with furry-headed super-old Danny instead?  
  
And, just like he reacts nine times out of ten, he shrugs. “Eh. She's fine. She knows she'll see me in the morning.”  
  
And it's no less weird than it ever is, getting picked over a beautiful woman – his _wife,_ no less – but Danny doesn't argue. He just picks a cartridge at random and holds it up to get Arin's approval since he's an annoying little shit that made sure his head stayed glued to Danny's shoulder from the second he moved. “Okay, so, this one.”  
  
And there's this long silent moment before Arin lifts his head, grabs the thing, and stares at it so intently that Danny thinks he might want to light it on fire. “...no.” It clatters across the room when he chucks it, but Danny barely jumps. “Already done.”  
  
“What?” He leans over to see what it was, manages to see the first two words are 'Zombies Ate.' “We never did a-”  
  
“It's already done, Danny, so fucking pick something else.”  
  
Arin's tone is so ice cold that Danny feels a shiver rush over his body. He watches Arin's profile for a few seconds, rubbing the goosebumps away from his arms. “All right, yeah, got it.” He half expects Arin to just jump on his back, rip him a new one, but no, his best friend is staring stoically at the TV, hands laced behind his head ever so casually. This time, Danny's careful what he picks. Grabs something that he and Arin haven't played, yes, but also that never graced the Game Grumps channel ever before. Because that's what it is. Arin played that game with a ghost, he remembers now, and Danny almost brought him back to life.  
  
Arin approves of the game with a curt nod, so he wanders across the room and shoves it into the console, tentatively meeting Arin's eyes. But he's still distant. Still in another place. Danny drops onto the couch next to him and hesitates before he slides just an inch closer, just enough that their thighs are touching on the cushions.  
  
Arin sucks in a deep, audible breath through his nose. And then he relaxes. Plucks up a controller and leans forward. “You ready?” he asks, finger poised above the button to start recording.  
  
“Yeah, go for it, man.”  
  
He'll never say no to another hour with his best friend, even if he feels like he'll spend the entire time trying to bring him back to the present.  
  
~~  
  
Once you actually get situated into a con, it's not too terrible. It's all the chaos of trying to get there and get in your zone and figuring out exactly how your schedule's going to go and everything else. And then when you finally get in the groove, it's the middle of the third day and you've basically got shit left to do, you know?  
  
Danny's pretty convinced that they all only survived the debacle of checking in through Suzy's guidance. She's a bundle of light, handing out the correct keys (Arin and Suzy in one room, Barry and Danny further down the hall, Ross and a late-arriving-tomorrow Holly one floor up – they somehow scored a suite thanks to the hotel, the bastards) and physically marking a check on the color-coded schedule she printed for everyone before announcing that they're dangerously close to falling behind and that they might only have _three_ minutes to freshen up before lunch instead of five. A fate worse than death, to be sure.  
  
She's shuffling them into the elevator, one arm around Arin and the other around Barry, when Danny drops his introductory packet just in front of the elevator alcove with a spluttering huff and leans down to get it. He's down there when he hears an outrageous laugh, deep and full and echoing through the whole damn lobby, and something in it strikes a chord in him, makes him look up with wide eyes.  
  
Yeah. Yeah, that's what he thought.  
  
He stares at Jon Jafari, far on the opposite side of the massive lobby. He's holding court with some devoted fans, apparently, his arm around someone that Danny can vaguely remember as his girlfriend – doesn't even remember her name, honestly, just that she sort of appeared a few months before Jon's disappearance and that she and Danny never really got a chance to meet. Someone shoves a piece of paper in front of Jon's face and he grins, cheerfully signing away.  
  
Dan's confident he's never seen a ghost before, but the sense of heaviness in his stomach and dread feels pretty damn real.  
  
“Dan, c'mon!” Suzy whines from where she's holding the elevator door. The elevators are tucked just far enough into the alcove where the others can't see the same sight Dan can, and he's is thankful for that, thinks that it's going to forestall anything awkward that might come to pass, but when he finally jogs toward the elevator he sees that Arin looks...stricken, really. He's staring at an empty place on the floor, eyes wide, jaw clenched, hands curled into tight fists. And while Ross and Barry are tossing jokes around and Suzy is watching Dan with a smile, Arin's in his own little world that none of the others seem to think of intruding.  
  
It's instinctual for Dan to tuck in next to Arin, on the opposite side of Suzy, but while she is busy reading the information packet Danny leans a little closer to his best friend. Arin's tilting his head down a bit more, a curtain of hair falling in his face. “You okay?” Dan softly asks, the words lost under Ross and Barry riffing off of each other.  
  
“Mm.” Arin cocks his head to the side with a little sigh. “Yeah. Just...just tired.”  
  
He waits for a beat before pushing a little more. “Tired of a lot of things?”  
  
Arin nods slowly. “Exactly that, yeah.”  
  
Danny nibbles on his bottom lip as he watches Arin's face shift back toward neutrality, abandoning the tension that was there only seconds ago. He speaks without thinking it through, just goes with his gut reaction after seeing Arin in such a state. “Wanna go get shitfaced tonight?”  
  
“Why?” He laughs, and it's probably supposed to be an easy sound but it's tinged with bitterness. “There's no reason to. Nothing worth doing that for. And besides, didn't you give up getting shitfaced?”  
  
“You're right, yeah,” he says immediately with a smile, deferring as he always does to Arin's wisdom. “I don't know what I was thinking. You just looked...”  
  
Arin looks up, meets his eyes and holds them with this silent and reckless courage that's probably going to get him killed one day. “Looked like what?”  
  
Arin's not even giving him an opening. So Dan just opens and closes his mouth a few times before he shakes his head and smiles wider. “Nothing, never mind, it's not a big deal.”  
  
If they were Grumping right now Arin would push him, riff on that until Danny was blushing and having massive amount of chest pain from laughing too hard. But Arin just nods a little and looks away again. When he throws his arm over Suzy's shoulder and starts murmuring near her ear Dan knows that he's lost him, and that's okay, that's what Suzy's there for and whatever.  
  
But there's still that sour feeling in his stomach. And Danny's still not sure what to make of it.  
  
~~  
  
“Well. There went my good day.”  
  
Danny snorts as he shoves his bag of toiletries into the space between the faucet and the wall. “With a plane delay like that I have _no_ idea how you had even a decent day until now. What changed?”  
  
Barry tosses the con schedule on the bed between them. “Check it out.”  
  
He plucks it up, and it takes him a few moments of scanning to figure it out. By then his eyebrows are somewhere in his hairline. “Dude.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Somebody up top's got a pretty sick sense of humor.”  
  
And it's gotta be true because right on that page is pure, unmistakeable evidence that God hates them. It's all condensed into a single horizontal column, specifically for their panel's room tomorrow: Game Grumps at 2:30pm, followed by Jontron at 4pm.  
  
“How likely is it that he'll be late for his own panel?” Danny asks, glancing up.  
  
Barry's face is completely flat. “Impossible. He's pretty thirsty for new viewers and subscribers. Always has been. He'll be out there signing stuff for the people waiting if they'll let him, trust me.”  
  
“And it's...gonna be bad if he and Arin get face-to-face, yeah?”  
  
“Dan, I can promise you that it'll be a shitstorm like you've never seen before.”  
  
“Fantastic.” Danny ruffles his hair anxiously, huffing out a sigh. The words that he's thought a thousand times before now flow out before he can stop them. “What even happened there?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Maybe he shouldn't press on. Maybe he should just say that it's nothing and change the subject. But now that he's already put the words out there after two fucking years he's ready to hear the answer. “With him and Jon.”  
  
Barry plops down on his bed and blows out a mouthful of air like a horse. “Phew. Dan. Trust me. You don't wanna get mixed up in that business.”  
  
And Danny'll be the first to say that he hates conflict, that he'd rather be a thousand miles away from it at all times, but this is different somehow. He fights the building churn in his stomach, Arin's face flicking past his mind's eye. “Maybe I do. C'mon, I've been Grumping for a couple of years now and I don't even know why I started doing it in the first place. Think of it as history. You like history, right?”  
  
“This isn't history.” He watches Dan with those wide, sort of sad blue eyes, hands pressed together in front of him where his arms rest on his knees. “And if it is, it's ancient, and that means it never needs to be brought up again.”  
  
Tell that to the archaeologists all across the globe. “...is it that bad?”  
  
Barry breathes in deeply, the sound sharp in his nose. He leans forward even more, the epitome of terrible posture with his eyes staring at his feet. “...look...Arin went through shit, okay? Him and Suzy both. And there's nothing I want less than for it all to get brought up somehow, because he's just gonna be right back in that headspace where this all started. And he doesn't deserve that.”  
  
Danny leans down, fists resting on his mattress, and stares long and hard at Barry from across the room, because he wants to make it absolutely clear that he knows this is a sensitive subject, he gets it, he's not joking, that in fact he's serious as dicks. “So when it comes down to your roommate wanting to understand how the hell he scored a side-by-side gig with Arin, or the guy that hired you to do his editing maybe possibly wanting you to keep quiet, you'll pick him over me.”  
  
And Barry doesn't even blink before he states a solid and clear “Yes.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
“Absolutely.”  
  
“And why's that?”  
  
“Roommates come and go.” Barry shrugs. “I love you, man, but you wouldn't be the first to just head out, you know?”  
  
He can't be mad about that, really. He's lived in a New York barrio with seven other guys in a one-bedroom apartment and had somebody skip out the day before rent was due. So he just swallows the little stab of disappointment and smiles. “I'm not him. Okay?”  
  
Barry quirks a brow. “What does _that_ mean?”  
  
“Exactly that. I'm not Jon. I'm not a bad guy.”  
  
“Jon wasn't a bad guy.”  
  
It's Danny's turn to cock a brow, to cross his arms over his chest. “You guys, uh...treat him like the Antichrist. No, even worse, like _Voldemort,_ He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, that sort of shit, and you're telling me he's not that bad?”  
  
Barry bites his bottom lip and studies his feet again. “We've all got our problems. We've all got hangups. That's not why we're not talking about him.”  
  
“Then what. Is. It.”  
  
He comes to his feet with a huff. “I'm gonna go take a shit before lunch. And you're gonna leave it. Because there's no way Arin's even looked at the schedule yet, and I'm not gonna let you ruin whatever good mood he gets in just because you're suddenly curious. All right?”  
  
Danny could argue. He probably even should. But he's not dumb enough to miss the fact that this avenue, at least for the time being, is closed. So he bats his eyelashes with a smirk. “You know, you're pretty sexy when you're being authoritative, Barry Kramer. Very nice.”  
  
“Oh my God,” he says with a grin and an eye roll. “Shut up.”  
  
So Barry shuts the bathroom door and Danny fiddles with his bed's comforter, and while half of his mind is on Suzy's no doubt impending text telling them to hurry their butts up, he's not gonna lie, he's focusing ten times more on the fact that he's not gonna let this go. Not for a second.  
  
~~  
  
See, the issue here isn't curiosity or even being a busybody, Dan finds himself thinking during a quiet moment at lunch. It's more so that he can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Arin upset – not stressed from a heavy workload or miffed at the silent treatment that might be well-deserved from Suzy, but honest-to-goodness _upset._ It's all in the way he carries it on his face: blank, cool, a naïve sort of sadness at the edges like a child who doesn't quite understand what he did to be put in time out. It leaves an impression. And it'll pop into Danny's head at random times, that expression, and leave him lost and confused and trying to find his way back to where he was in the present.  
  
It occurs to him that maybe he should wonder why it matters so much to him, should ask himself why just the mere possibility of Arin being a little broken should completely break through the haze of getting ready for the con. But he doesn't. He accepts it at face value.  
  
Arin Hanson is his best friend. Arin found this old wash-up of a musician and thought his and his friend's dumb song about dinosaurs was worth animating. Arin sat down for hours with him listening to everything and nothing: his crushes on his pretty co-workers that he was way too old for, his worries about being far away from his parents if something happened as they got older, his dumb protective instincts toward his adventurous sister. And he never complained, Not once, not when it was important.  
  
Arin Hanson is solely responsible for the fact that Danny is making one hundred percent of his income by playing dumb video games and selling songs about dicks rather than spending every hour stressing over how fucking much he has to get done.  
  
So Danny decides that the solid, underlying issue is really the fact that something is definitely hurting Arin. It's been hurting him for two whole years. And nobody seems to care that maybe the hurt could stop.  
  
Maybe the pain would be super amplified for a few days while it was hashed out and fully realized. But maybe after going through that fire Arin could be on the path to getting over it so thoroughly that he never thought about it again.  
  
~~  
  
There has to be another path he can take to figure all this out. He can't just drop it, no matter how authoritative Barry tries to be. But the paths aren't infinite. There's, what, four or five of them, and they're all at least a little scary. Suzy and Arin were bad ideas for a number of reasons, of course, and then there was the even _worse_ idea of going to Jon himself. That left Holly and Ross. He knew that Holly had never been the biggest fan of Jon in the first place, for reasons he didn't quite understand back when he first crashed onto the scene, but Ross? He thought they were both still civil, at least, even if they didn't talk regularly.  
  
It'd be him, then. And given that he was open and willing to talk about pretty much anything, Danny doubted he'd be too hard to crack.  
  
What Dan hadn't counted on was Barry being attached to him like a fucking barnacle. That's his new name, actually: Barry the Barnacle.  
  
If Danny tried to sit next to Ross at dinner, Barry was there to squeeze between them. Trying to pull him aside when they were all heading to Arin and Suzy's room to hang out failed because Barry reminded Suzy that Ross still needed to sign their remaining paperwork before they could even hold the panel tomorrow. He was _everywhere,_ and he was always watching Dan without fail.  
  
“Why, Barry,” Danny finally hisses when they're heading down the hall to their room after Suzy kicked them out, “didn't know you'd finally got a crush on me. You just can't leave me alone, can you?”  
  
It's Barry that swipes the card to let them in, and he does it with such force that Dan's shocked it doesn't break the card right down the middle. “I can't believe you're doing this shit,” he mutters as they go inside and he nearly slams the door behind them. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Dan, was everything I said earlier not good enough for you?”  
  
“Look, I just want some information.”  
  
“Do you wanna know why he left?” Barry snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. “Honestly and truly?”  
  
Dan waits expectantly.  
  
“He left to work on Jontron. And that's. It.”  
  
Danny scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Fuck you, Barry.”  
  
“That's all the info the fans have gotten, and that's all you're gonna get, and that's that!”  
  
“But why?”  
  
“Do you think you're _owed_ an explanation or something?”  
  
“Hell yes, I do! If something happened that made Jon want to leave the exact position I took over, then I think I need to know if I should keep my eyes wide open!”  
  
“Dan.” Barry steps into his space, the anger clearly radiating off of him. “If you were in some kind of danger or whatever, don't you think I'd tell you?”  
  
“Well, I-”  
  
“No, seriously, think about it, from the first day I met you have I done a single thing to make me untrustworthy?”  
  
And because Danny is still a good man, even if he _is_ pushy right now, he holds his lips shut in a thin line and forces himself to think about it seriously. “...no.”  
  
“Okay then.”  
  
But he's still not done. Even though he's the one to retreat back and sit on his bed, he's already opening his mouth. “I won't tell Arin, Bar. I won't tell _anyone._ I just want to know why I'm here.”  
  
“This is all I'm going to say.” And because Barry's voice is soft, even regretful, Danny listens. “If I told you why, you'd go two ways. You'd refuse to leave Arin alone...or you'd walk right out the door. I know you, Dan, and better than you think. But I know Arin too. And he's not-”  
  
“Not ready.”  
  
“Exactly. Look, honestly, I think you'll know one day. But not yet. And it'd be cool if you'd accept that.  
  
“Yeah,” Danny murmurs. “Okay.”  
  
There's still the burning in the base of him, the need to know, to _fix,_ but maybe he can be enough of an adult to wait.  
  
~~  
  
Danny sees the exact moment at breakfast when Arin knows. He's been scanning the schedule between bites of bacon, probably blissfully unaware of both Barry and Dan staring right at him the whole damn time, and then there's a moment where his jaw just...locks.  
  
Barry and Dan look straight at each other before immediately shoveling food into their mouths.  
  
The whole morning sucks after that. He won't talk to anybody, not even Suzy, but she doesn't push him, doesn't even get annoyed, and everyone tentatively follows her lead. Holly's arrival is a more than welcome distraction leading them into the last two hours before their panel.  
  
And honestly? The panel goes pretty damn smoothly. Arin must reach deep down inside himself because he cracks jokes left and right, cynical and dry as most of them happen to be. But then again, the man's brilliant. Nobody's got Danny's respect quite like Arin.  
  
Doesn't make Dan miss the fact that Arin tries to push the panel to a close as quickly as he can,  
  
When it's over Arin's the first one up and out of his seat, charging at the door like a fucking bull, and Danny and Suzy are the ones scrambling to grab the shit he left behind while Ross and Barry try to ease the crowd into the break rather than spawn questions about Arin's departure.  
  
They actually get to the door at the exact same time, and it takes Dan a second to realize he's supposed to let her through first, that she's the wife and he's just the best friend, and it's that second of hesitation that makes the scene in front of them a reality.  
  
Arin is standing stock still in the middle of the hallway. He's pretty damn easy to see, given that it looks like the whole crowd of people has split to expose him, like the world just _wants_ him to see the man slowly approaching him with a grin that almost splits his face. “Well, look at this! If my eyes don't deceive me it's gotta be Arin Egoraptor Hanson! How are you, buddy?”  
  
And the only response is a low “Hello, Jon.”  
  
Dan actually goes to step forward, to break the tension, but Suzy grabs his arm, sends a hot fizz of energy running through him from the contact, and drags him against the nearest wall. “Wait.”  
  
“But Scuze-”  
  
“ _Wait._ ”  
  
He does.  
  
“You look good, man,” Jon continues, cheerful as anything, “real good! I haven't heard from you in a while, been wondering how life's been treating you.”  
  
“It's been fine.”  
  
“Yeah? Tsk.” Jon puts his hands on his hips. “Unbelievable, you're not even gonna hug me? Seriously? Suzy don't let you hug people now that you're married? Beautiful ceremony, by the way; I sent flowers, think you probably got 'em.”  
  
Dan remembers them. Arin took one look at the namecard and put then outside to rot.  
  
Arin finally takes a step forward, arms opening, and Jon pulls him into a bone-crushing hug, actually cackling as he swings Arin off his feet and into the air. Dan has to squint but he sees Arin shape the whispered word “Stop,” watches Jon grin as he sets him down.  
  
Of course, it only takes three seconds for a fan in line to pipe up and yell “Yo, Jon, when are you coming back to Game Grumps? It fucking sucks since you left!”  
  
And maybe Danny should feel upset about that, but honestly he doesn't even give a shit, not when Arin looks like...like _that._ He doesn't even know how to describe it. It's this weird combination of annoyance and frustration – those are both _clearly_ visible – but also something else right under it. It's a variation of what he wore around Suzy in the weeks before the wedding, like he's...wistful?  
  
No, there's no way.  
  
“Hey, man, c'mon,” Jon calls back, “that time's over, okay? I got different stuff going on right now, and I like where it's going. Embrace Danny. Embrace the Avidan. He won't lead you astray!” He's spinning dramatically as he proclaims this but freezes in place when he's facing them. “Suzy~!” He positively croons her name, and Dan can't help but shift his weight awkwardly, remembering all the times he's sang out Suzy's name just like that so he can see her smile. He has to fight not to look at her face and see if she's smiling right now. “Miss Suzy Berhow...no, _Mrs._ Berhow, sorry, force of habit, all that, how are you, how's Jean, the rest of the family?”  
  
“They're good.” Dan doesn't have to look at her to hear the politeness and see the model's smile. “How's Nicole?”  
  
“Oh, she's amazing, just fantastic. It's good to see you, really, I mean it, you're just as beautiful as ever, got that honeymoon glow still going strong and all that, both of you.”  
  
“Thank you, Jon, that's really sweet.”  
  
For the life of him Danny can't tell if Jon is genuinely happy to see them or if he's showing off his acting chops. It's making his hands ache a little in nervous adrenaline. But all he knows is that when Jon meets his eyes there's a glint in them, a faint sheen of sweat over his entire face. “Danny.”  
  
“Jon.”  
  
“Loved Attitude City, seriously, fantastic shit there.”  
  
Danny blinks, smiles just like the performer he is since he can't quite figure out the air between them yet. “Thanks, man, we worked hard on it.”  
  
“I can tell.” Jon looks right back at Suzy, and just like that Dan's not even in the room anymore. “Well, I've got a panel to do, so...”  
  
She nods, still smiling like she's posing. “Hope it's a good one.”  
  
“Thanks.” And he leans forward without any warning...and plants a kiss right on her cheek. “Have a good one.”  
  
Even after Jon disappears into the side door Dan is staring at Suzy with huge eyes. And to her credit Suzy just heaves a sigh, smoothing down her bangs, and looks at Arin.  
  
Arin...he's somewhere else right now, some other world even as he stares back. But the blankness is there, the neutrality. It's just a few seconds before he turns and trudges straight toward the elevator.  
  
“I have to go talk to him,” she murmurs, touching Danny's arm. “Do me a favor? Go find Ross.”  
  
“...why, exactly?”  
  
“Dan? Just do it, okay?”  
  
Her tone might be gentle, but he knows better than to say no. “Sure thing.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
He hears a swell of cheering beside him as Jon's panel starts, and he lets the soundwaves push him all the way to the distant staircase.  
  
~~  
  
He doesn't bother with a text or a phone call, not when his head is this fuzzy. He just walks a bit listlessly until he's at Ross's room, and then he stares at the number for a few long seconds before he remembers to knock.  
  
Ross answers and blinks. “Hey Dan, what's up?”  
  
“I need to talk to you.”  
  
He visibly deflates, gets ready to pout. “Dude, Holly just got in this morning, come on.”  
  
“I...” He pauses, crosses his arms over his chest, and shifts his weight with a sigh. “I know, I'm sorry, I don't even know what's going on, I just...like, something happened with Jon downstairs, and Suzy told me to come talk to you, and-”  
  
“Is this Jon Jafari we're talking about?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Ross looks away and breathes out a “Shit.”  
  
There's a second or two of silence before Holly appears over Ross's shoulder, tying a sash around her waist for her cosplay. “Everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Dan responds immediately, feeling the instinctual urge to keep everything calm. “I just-”  
  
“I think you're gonna have to go to the panel alone, Holly,” Ross interrupts. “That okay?”  
  
“Yeah.” God bless the fact that she doesn't even hesitate, just pecks Ross on the cheek. “See you tonight?”  
  
“Mm-hmm.”  
  
As she turns to go back to the mirror, Ross puffs out his cheeks, then sends the air shooting out in a rush. “Coffee. You wanna get some coffee?”  
  
“Can we...talk about whatever this is in a coffee shop?”  
  
“We can try. C'mon.”  
  
Making small talk is almost impossible when Danny is so tightly wound just from the past twenty-four hours and Ross is so occupied in his own head. That, more than anything, throws Dan off, because Ross is an avoider. He doesn't tackle issues, he tries to scoot around them while distracting you from the giant elephant in the corner. So the fact that he's standing here in line for their coffee so damn focused on whatever this is, not a word to be said? It makes Danny nervous.  
  
By the time they're tucked in a corner, Danny with his black and Ross with some white chocolate painfully sugary concoction, Dan's as jittery as if the caffeine was already in him.  
  
“So...” Ross absently stirs his straw through the liquid, eyes lingering on Dan's.  
  
He figures he might as well dive right in. “If this is about Jon, why'd Suzy send me to _you?_ ”  
  
Ross slurps up a long drink and licks his lips. “Your room's near theirs. She doesn't want you to hear them fighting.”  
  
He blinks. “Seriously?”  
  
“I have never heard them yell as loudly about something as they do about Jon.” And he's so serious that Dan believes him immediately.  
  
“But why?” He's done with pretense. He's done with deals from Barry or pretending he doesn't care. He just wants some fucking understanding.  
  
Ross exhales long and slow, tracing his finger through the swirls of condensation on his cup before leaning forward, and Danny unconsciously mirrors him. “Jon is...look, he's a complicated guy.”  
  
“I've noticed.”  
  
“He never really...grew up all the way. And I know that's saying something – I think Holly and Suzy are the only adults out of all of us – but Jon is a kid, he just is. He doesn't think before he speaks or acts and he doesn't ever wanna be wrong and he's an actor to the fucking core, and they loved him anyway.”  
  
Danny already figured that, though. You don't run a show with somebody you hate. “So what changed?”  
  
Ross sinks deeper into his seat. “I...I don't-”  
  
“Ross,” Danny murmurs, leaning across the table, “Suzy _told_ me to talk to you. I think she knew you were gonna talk.”  
  
Ross stares across the room for a long moment. Sips his drink. But he won't make Danny wait for long, he knows that. It's when his foot starts tapping a rapid beat on the floor that Dan tunes his ears a little more, because that's when Ross immediately leans in again, drops his voice. “Look, we all loved him, but...” He's distressed. It's coming across in how his accent is bleeding a little deeper into his words, the traces of Australian that rarely ever makes an appearance unless he's red-faced and flustered while they're gaming. “...but, y'know, maybe one of them loved him a little more?”  
  
Danny blinks a few times. And then he feels the weight of the statement drop onto him in a rush that knocks the breath right out of him.  
  
“I-I don't think anybody planned it, I don't think they even really wanted it, but it _happened,_ okay, and like...look, things got messy, they got _real_ fucking messy, and there was some jealousy and misunderstanding and whatever else a-and...”  
  
He's seeing in, then, Arin's reluctance to talk about Jon at all, how Jon's eyes lit up with something when he approached in the hallway, the smoothness of Suzy's voice and the way Jon had pressed his lips to her cheek.  
  
He'd made a move on Suzy.  
  
Danny's heart is pounding for reasons he doesn't understand fully, just knows that there's a racing worry shooting through his veins. “Oh my God, Arin.”  
  
“Y'know, in hindsight, I-I dunno if Suzy really wanted me to tell you anything-”  
  
“Did anything happen with them?” he snaps, curling his hand around the edge of the table and squeezing until his knuckles turn white.  
  
Ross holds up his hands. “Hold on right there, I'm done, I'm not saying another fucking word or I'll get fired, I can just _feel_ it.”  
  
“Ross. Did anything. Happen.”  
  
He stares at him before huffing out a sigh, rubbing at his eyes. “Not for long.”  
  
The buzz in Danny's pocket is so abrupt that he almost flies out of his seat, just about tears his pocket off as he pulls out his phone. It's a text from Arin simply reading _“We need to talk.”_  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“What is it?” Ross peeks out between his fingers.  
  
“Arin wants to talk to me. I-I...I gotta go.”  
  
Ross sits up straight. “Dude, no offense, but I'd _really_ appreciate it if you didn't tell him anything I said, I don't think even Holly can protect me if he decides to beat the shit out of me.”  
  
But he's already heading toward the door, walking as fast as he can without looking suspicious. “We'll talk later, Ross, thanks.”  
  
He types out a quick response to Arin: _”Right now? Your room or mine?”_  
  
He's getting in the elevator when he reads a _”Mine.”_  
  
Danny's at the door not even a full minute later, and when he knocks it opens almost immediately, like Arin was standing there waiting for him. They stare at each other for a long few seconds before Arin clears his throat, moves out of the way. “Come in, man, sorry to leave you standing in the hall.”  
  
“It's no problem, dude.” He takes only a few steps inside, just enough for Arin to shut the door without hitting him, and then there's that awkwardness in the air again, a heaviness hovering right over him. “...should I...”  
  
“You can have a seat if you want.”  
  
The enormous bed in the middle of the room is about the only sittable place in the whole damn place. Danny wanders over and perches on it, toeing off his shoes before he curls his legs one over the other on the comforter.  
  
Apparently Arin isn't going to sit. He wanders across the room to the window, stares out it for a moment, then wanders back in front of the bed. Long, leisurely pacing. A completely blank face. Danny feels his skin buzzing anxiously. “...you wanna talk, man?”  
  
“Yeah.” He almost barks the word, like he's constantly on the edge of being off-guard, but he finally clears his throat and stands at the edge of the bed, hands hovering in front of him as he sorts through his thoughts. Danny forces himself to wait. Arin talks with his hands so often that when they're there, right in front of him, it'd be as rude as interrupting him mid-sentence if he spoke now. “...Dan, you know you're my best friend, right?”  
  
Danny blinks. “Yeah.”  
  
“No, I mean it, like...” He makes little swirly circles with his hands before he laughs. “Like, seriously, you're this weird force in my life that fits me like fucking _perfectly,_ and you have been ever since we got sushi that first day, and you're awesome and I love you to death. No homo.”  
  
Danny nods, not sure if he needs any encouragement but too on edge to let him just ramble without any. “Yeah, me too, Arin, I mean it.”  
  
“Okay, good. Well. That means that like...maybe...” He winces, still not looking at Dan, staring at the space between his hands like he's reading a crystal ball there. “...I haven't been completely honest with you about stuff? And that's like super shitty of me?”  
  
It's tempting to nod, but he doesn't. When there's silence he tries to fill it with whatever he needs to hear. “It's okay, man, there's like...hard stuff to talk about sometimes. I get that.”  
  
“Doesn't meet it's cool of me. It really doesn't.” Arin meets his eyes for half a second before he sighs loudly, rakes his hands through his hair, and sits right there, right on the fucking floor like a child or something. “Oh my God this is hard,” he mumbles from behind his hands.  
  
Danny wrinkles his brow, flops forward on his stomach just to be a little closer. “Dude, seriously, you can chill, it's okay. We don't even have to like talk about it if you don't want to.”  
  
“Yeah we do.” He laughs a little more bitterly this time, drops his hands to look at Danny with this cynical gleam in his eyes, the ones Dan only ever sees on late nights when they're barely held together by sugar and caffeine. “Oh yeah we fucking do. Because Suzy's not letting me sleep here tonight if I don't talk about it, apparently. She told me to pussy up.”  
  
“Oh _wow._ ” He can't help but smile. “The Scuze has got the whip out, huh? Scary.”  
  
“Yeah, you have no idea how scary everything is.” Arin doesn't smile back, just stares at Danny for a few seconds more before he flops back on his ass, pulls his legs to his chest and wraps his arms around them. “So can I just like...maybe...talk for a little while? And you just let me do it? Don't say anything or judge me or anything, just...listen?”  
  
“Yeah.” He doesn't even have to think about his reply. “Yeah, Arin, whatever helps. Just shoot when you're ready, okay?”  
  
“Cool.” Arin rests his chin on his knees, bounces it lightly a few times before he blows a rush of air out. “Cool. All right. Here we go. So Jon.”  
  
Nice segue there, Danny thinks, but he somehow holds back the smile, just keeps his eyes on Arin's face even as his best friend's looking anywhere but at him.  
  
“I don't even have to tell you how Jon and I met, you already know all that shit. Hell, you know pretty much everything: how we met, how we started Grumps, whatever. But there's also like...stuff I didn't tell you, and...it's about why he left, right? Like, I'm pretty sure you've wondered about that maybe seven thousand times before because, let's be honest, I am the suckiest liar on the face of the fucking planet, so the likelihood of you believing all the half-truths or whatever's pretty slim to none...”  
  
This time Danny nods helpfully, but he keeps his mouth shut. It's a little thing, so small compared to some of the things Arin has asked him to do before, so fine, whatever, he'll do it. And it's easy somehow even though he's Leigh Dan Avidan, nervous talker extraordinaire. He's not really sure why.  
  
“...before you and I started getting close...Jon was my best friend. He just was. It actually bugged the ever-living shit out of Ross for a while, because you know, he's been there so much longer, but here this kid was coming in and hanging out with us all the time, whatever. But we clicked. He lit fires under my comedy somehow. He started driving me to these ridiculous heights I didn't even know I was capable of reaching. That's half the reason we started Grumps in the first place. But...”  
  
The silence hanging in the air is so long that Danny's starts to feel his nerves burning again, the awareness that something is just...off and...he scoots closer to the edge of the bed, attracting Arin's eyes, and cocks his head to the side, opening his mouth before he remembers no, he's supposed to wait, supposed to let Arin talk himself to death, whatever, so he snaps his mouth shut and buries half his face in his arms, peering over them through his bangs to lock his eyes with Arin.  
  
He...looks _scared._  
  
“Dude,” Arin murmurs, unfolding himself and pressing his hands together, resting his lips again the side of them as he thinks. “...you gotta promise me you're not gonna hate me before I say this.”  
  
That spikes the alarm in Danny's veins. What the hell could Arin have done to make Dan, of all people, hate him? Did he run over a squirrel once intentionally? Burn some priceless piece of music? Tell Brian he was fat? What the hell? He wrinkles his brows, lifts his head a little more.  
  
Arin sucks in a thick breath. “We got close. Damn close. Like, he basically wasn't even going home to his and Barry's apartment anymore, he was just staying over, and it was this one big perpetual hangout, and yeah, sometimes I hated his fucking guts because he'd just say these things – these _stupid fucking things_ \- and didn't give a shit what I thought when he did, but when it was all over I didn't even care, I _wanted_ him there, and I guess I figured it all out the night that...that I kissed him.”  
  
It takes a minute for that bomb to drop fully in Danny's head. One second he's watching Arin with concern, the next his eyes are huge and he's sitting straight up, mouth open and closing like a fish as he fights the desperate urge to ask him just what the hell sort of joke that is when they're supposed to fucking be talking about something serious, the son of a bitch-  
  
“You know what I look like when I joke, Dan,” he murmurs, voice low and smooth even though his hands are shaking when he holds them up. “I'm not. And if I was this would be a really fucking sick joke.”  
  
His heart is thudding in his chest. He thinks he might ralph all over Arin's goddamn face. No, it was...Jon and _Suzy_ messing around, not-  
  
“It was an accident, honestly, I-I didn't mean to kiss him, we were just dicking around-” He winces, seems to reconsider the term, but presses on. “-and whatever, like, I've kissed a guy before, it's hilarious, it's a great joke, it gets a shit ton of views, and it's never been longer than a fucking millisecond, but we were just...joking and shit, telling each other like...how pretty the other was, I don't even fucking know, and then we were leaning in, and maybe we were playing chicken? But I-I guess he lost, 'cuz...yeah, I definitely kissed him.”  
  
“Was it longer than a millisecond this time?”  
  
He doesn't know why of all things _that's_ what he chose to ask, but there it is, and Arin's looking at him again, looking pained. “It, uh...it wasn't at first, but...”  
  
Danny can almost see the whole scene, all in that goddamn room where he and Arin have told a thousand stories and a thousand jokes, him and Jon sitting on the couch, him kissing Jon's fucking face, a sudden break between their lips before Jon spat something out - “'Bout fucking time,” maybe – and nearly tackled him into the couch.  
  
“Look, I felt like shit, Dan. I kicked him out and I went straight upstairs and fucking cried in Suzy's lap, 'cuz I'd just done that, I'd fucking kissed somebody and she had no idea it was happening, was just upstairs painting her nails. Do you know how shitty that feels? Knowing you actually just cheated on somebody?”  
  
An old girlfriend once asked Danny if kissing somebody in a club or whatever could even be called cheating since it didn't mean anything unless you loved somebody. He hadn't known how to reply at the time, had laughed it off and said whatever she wanted so she could feel better, but seeing how shattered Arin looks even now is enough to make him want to break in response.  
  
“And she was mad, yeah, she made me sleep on the couch, and I thought that was it. She was gonna give the ring back, I was gonna leave, I was never gonna see her again. But she came downstairs the next day, and she read me the riot act, told me if I was ever fucking interested in somebody else ever again I had to tell her.”  
  
He's seen Suzy cry. He can see it now if he focuses just a little harder. Danny feels something inside him crumple.  
  
“And then...she told me to go call Jon and invite him over and that she was gonna go to the mall all day, and that I should have fun.”  
  
Something snaps out of place inside of him in response. “Are you fucking serious?”  
  
“I am _so_ fucking serious, I wouldn't lie about something like that, man, she was just...we talked about it for another hour, but she was so cool with it. Said as long as I was happy... _she_ was happy. That she knew how it was. That as long as she was first in my life, she didn't have to be my one and only, you know?”  
  
He can't stop gaping at Arin. His brain's stopped producing thoughts. He's just...here.  
  
“So Jon came over. We talked. We...we figured a lot of shit out, and...” Arin bites his bottom lip, sighing. “That was that, you know?”  
  
“Were...were you dating, or...?”  
  
“Man, I still don't know the fuck what we were doing. We were best friends who fucked sometimes, I don't even.”  
  
“You fucked Jon Jafari. Jesus fucking Christ, Arin.”  
  
Arin chuckles, rubbing at his face. “I wasn't complaining at the time.”  
  
See, the funny thing is yeah, he feels sick, but it's not the fact that he liked or kissed or even fucked a dude, it's the fact that it was Jon, that it was going on the whole time that Dan and Arin were building their friendship, that Arin had fucking directed one of Ninja Sex Party's videos with his Best Friend Who He Fucked Sometimes starring in it. He remembers vividly a distinct moment of downtime while they tried to fix a few of the props that were being a piece of shit, where nobody could find Arin or Jon for a good thirty minutes, and he can't help but wonder if they were giving each other fucking handies in a closet or something.  
  
It was happening, and nobody ever thought to tell Dan.  
  
Why does that make him feel so pissed off?  
  
“Who knew?” Danny asks softly.  
  
Arin meets his eyes quickly. He knows that tone of voice. It's not the theatrical anger that Danny plays up for videos, it's the warm trace of anger that lurks sweetly in his veins like wine, that makes him stop talking to someone for days at a time as he tries to make sense of it. Arin clears his throat. “Uh...Suzy, Ross, Barry...”  
  
“Did everybody know but me?”  
  
Arin spreads his arms wide. “Dude, you were the fucking new kid on the block, I was still pretty damn closeted, what was I supposed to do? Put on a goddamn pride flag and start dancing on the beach? Are you shitting me?”  
  
“You're _still_ closeted!” he snaps. “What, I'm your best friend now, but I still don't get to know that part of you? What else have you got compartmentalized, huh? What else don't I know?”  
  
“Look, Dan, there's a good fucking reason I didn't tell you, don't act like this was just me shoving you away or whatever.”  
  
Anger's always been a little contagious between them both. They can laugh about it, can bring each other down from the height of it, but when the fires get stoked deliberately in both of them at the same time that's when the defensiveness comes out, when they start sniping at each other when they should probably just chill out and walk away for two minutes or something.  
  
Danny knows this. He feels the distinct urge to get up and leave the room and come back once he's calm. But it's been too long since this all started, since he even started wondering, and he still doesn't know _anything,_ does he, and he's not leaving until he does. “Why, then?”  
  
“Dan.”  
  
“No, I wanna know what the fucking reason was that you couldn't tell me.”  
  
“You don't give a shit why it ended, but you care that I didn't tell you I was fucking him when I barely knew you? Seriously?”  
  
Dan throws his hands in the air. “All right! Go on, then, why'd it end? Why _did_ you break off?”  
  
“You're a dick,” Arin scoffs, coming to his feet, crossing his arms over his chest as he paces to the window. “I don't even know why I'm trying to talk about this with you.”  
  
“I mean, apparently you're doing it because Suzy told you to, so.”  
  
Arin glares over his shoulder. “...you're an idiot too.” He leans back against the wall and tips his head back, studies the ceiling. “Suzy's my first in like...almost every single way. And she's my first priority now, just like she was back then. The thing is I thought Jon could handle that, but...”  
  
Silence.  
  
He sighs. “Jon tests people...because he needs them to prove that they're gonna stick around through the thick and thin, even if he becomes absolutely impossible to handle. And one day he decided to test himself against Suzy.”  
  
“I assume it didn't go well.”  
  
“You'd be right.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
Arin holds up a hand, closes his eyes. “All you need to know is that there's a reason Suzy had to get a new mic to record her stuff, and it definitely involved him.”  
  
He remembers that, actually, one day that he and Arin were set to get some lunch, coming over and finding Suzy almost in tears and Arin desperately trying to keep her calm. They didn't get food that day.  
  
“It ended because it had to. Because he wanted more than I could give. Like...maybe it could've been different if he and Suzy had clicked a little more, but he didn't want her and-”  
  
“Whoa, wait, what do you mean?”  
  
“Jesus fuck, there's so much,” Arin whispers as he rubs at his face before huffing out a deep breath. “She was...curious, okay? Like, interested in trying things out with him too. I think she saw what direction it was going in way back in the beginning, knew he'd start trying to demand all my attention, and she knew it'd be easier if...maybe we both were there? Both with him? Not us fighting for attention or whatever, but just one big heap of friends that fucked, I don't know, but she wasn't...really his cup of tea, I guess.”  
  
Dan can't help but breathe a laugh. “That's impossible, she's _everybody's_ cup of tea.”  
  
“Yeah, you'd think that, right? But no go.”  
  
He shakes his head. “Then why'd he kiss her cheek in the hallway?”  
  
Arin shrugs. “Same as always. I think he might've been trying to make me jealous.”  
  
“Did it work?”  
  
There's a moment of hesitation before he wiggles his hand in the air, gives a vague “Ehh...” in response.  
  
“I mean, you're over him, right?”  
  
“Dan, there's...” He laughs this time, rakes a hand through his hair. “I'm this...really weird fucking creature, yeah? I don't just get over somebody. I can't. I never have. I'm a lucky son of a gun that Suzy wanted to marry me 'cuz if she'd left I'd have been screwed over for life. So I mean, there's something still there. Probably always will be. But I also guess that...Christ, this is hard.”  
  
He looks like he's about to jump out the fucking window, he's so anxious, and Danny feels an indescribable wave trying to pick him up and carry him straight toward him, but he doesn't know why. Feels a vague sense of unease at maybe getting caught in the undertow. “Just say it, man.”  
  
“You're gonna hate me,” he murmurs on a nervous laugh.  
  
“Hey.” He waits until Arin looks at him, a steady current flowing between their eyes, before he speaks again. “...I could _never_ hate you.”  
  
There's silence, this long and thick silence, that stretches between them, knots around that current, makes Danny hold his breath without even really knowing why, and he almost misses it when Arin murmurs “Maybe I have a...Not-So-Grump fetish?”  
  
The words hang there in the air, tenuous and thin, and it takes a few seconds before the full weight of them settles on Dan. He should laugh. He knows he should. Senses it clear as day. But he can't. He opens and closes his mouth a few times. Makes a strange, sort of strangled noise before he stops trying. “E-excuse me?”  
  
And Arin backs off just as quickly, seems to shrink into the wall a little more. “Never mind.”  
  
“No, there's no 'never mind' here, you just...can you elaborate, maybe?”  
  
“I'd rather not.”  
  
“I don't give a shit, because it sounds an awful lot like you're saying something that...may or may not involve me, and I'd _really_ like a little clarification before I just start assuming stuff.”  
  
Arin looks at him with this weird expression, some combination between anger and nerves, and just lets it fly. “Look, I'm saying I might have a thing for you, just like I did with Jon, and that it's been there for like a fucking year now, and you know what? Honestly? Kept hoping it was gonna go away, right?” He's pacing now, arms just about flailing as he talks. “'Cuz I don't exactly have a good track record when it comes to getting a crush on my co-hosts and best friends, but guess what, not happening! No, you pretty much just...shoved your way there under my skin and I can't fucking get you out no matter what I try, man! Do you know how much that fucking _sucks?!_ ”  
  
He thinks he's maybe comprehending this correctly, but there's also the part where his heart is pounding, like...going so fast that his vision's legitimately pulsing with little tiny dots, that he's breathing just a little too quickly. He reaches on instinct to poke at the pulse in his neck, eyes going fuzzy and unfocused for a moment as he tries to catch up, tries to figure out if he's legitimately about to panic or not.  
  
Arin ends up full out sweeping his arm over the chest of drawers, where Suzy has her make-up and cosplay things piled up, and Danny jumps as it all crashes to the floor, pieces and details scattering everywhere, and by the time he's looking at Arin's face again his best friend's sitting on the floor against the piece of furniture, hands covering his face, taking thick breaths that sound like he's trying to calm himself but are really about to hyperventilate him, probably. “Danny, y-you're my best friend, okay, I'd never push you for anything else, I _mean_ that, but I...I had to say something. Because it's all tangled up together, yeah? If you know about Jon you have to know about this, and if you don't know about Jon – know _everything_ \- I'm holding out on you, keeping you from being the person that knows me best besides Suzy, so I just...” There's a full body shiver that shakes through Arin. Danny focuses on it, on the way each little hair on his head quivers, because if he doesn't he's going to lose himself in the clawing acidic feeling in his throat, he knows it, knows he needs to focus on every little minute detail of this moment just to get himself out of his head. “Just. Please. Can you promise me you'll at least take time to think about the fact that nothing's gonna change before you...try to leave?”  
  
It takes a second for that to smack him square in the face. “...try to leave?”  
  
“Yeah, I know you're thinking it, I know you're not gonna want to be around-”  
  
“Arin, what part of you being my best friend don't you fucking understand?” he asks, scooting to the edge of the bed, planting his feet squarely on the floor and feeling like he's looming over Arin anyway.  
  
Arin chances a look at him. “You're straight as a fucking ruler, man.” He scoffs. “I'm shocked you don't have to say 'no homo' every time you touch your fucking dick to take a piss. How else are you gonna react when a dude says they may be having less-than-pure thoughts about you?”  
  
“Y-you're not just some dude!” Danny stammers. “You're Arin Fucking Hanson!”  
  
“Why the hell's that matter?”  
  
“Because I know you. And I love you, okay? You're my bro.” Could he sound any more like a frat boy? He's a fucking thirty-five-year-old man. “You're not gonna like...try anything unless I want to. You're not gonna get fresh and friendly or...well, I mean, friendlier than usual, right?”  
  
Arin gets quiet. Stares down at the carpet, splays his bare toes against it.  
  
“...right?”  
  
Arin chuckles, deep and bitter. “Can't get much friendlier, can I? It only started 'cuz I was trying to flirt, didn't it?”  
  
He stares at him.  
  
“See, the weird thing is...like, there was a while there I thought maybe there was a chance you were...starting to feel the same way, because you stopped freaking out, you know? If I hugged you a little too long or started playing things up while we were recording or, hell, anything, you stopped...jumping away from it. You gave in. That messed me up so bad, man.”  
  
Danny can't help it. He looks away, starts trying to connect the dots in his head, when he made the conscious decision to play along a little more rather than letting his panicked instincts guide him.  
  
“Took me seeing that you did the same shit with Ross and Barry or whatever to realize it wasn't relevant to what I was feeling, but...”  
  
The issue is there's no conscious decision. There's no day when he woke up and thought 'Okay, time to start playing up the Yes Full Homo action for the audience.' It's more like a gradual tide change, his feet dry one day, then wet up to his ankles the next, then his knees, then his waist...  
  
“...I need to shut up. I'm sorry, man. Look, the whole point is I had to tell you and be honest with you 'cuz keeping it all inside was really starting to suck, and I trust our friendship enough to know that it's still gonna be there when this talk's over.”  
  
He's remembering little moments, then, all piled up together. The first day Arin put his head on Danny's shoulder when Danny didn't flinch away, instead felt a little thrum of contentment from having him so close when they both were so wiped. That day they got sushi together when Arin smirked as he held a roll out for Danny to take from his own chopsticks, where Danny took it in the most obnoxiously seductive way he could and winked and played it up like nothing else and thought the flush on Arin's cheeks was from him laughing so hard. That unused Steam Train where him and Arin and Ross were all piled on a couch and playing something so shitty that they had to try to fill the cracks themselves, where Arin and Danny keyed in on some disgustingly flirtatious banter, where Ross rounded it all off with a “Jesus Christ, just fuck already,” and Danny felt adrenaline fizzling everywhere through him as he cackled, felt it kick even more into gear when Arin collapsed against his chest in his own fit of laughter.  
  
“I understand if you need a few days or whatever, it's cool. We're professionals. We can get through the last panel, and then-”  
  
“Could you just shut up for a sec, Arin?” Danny asks softly, wrinkling his brow, trying to make everything make sense.  
  
Arin blinks. “I'm sorry?”  
  
“Shut up for just one fucking second, I can't...”  
  
It's in the silence that he pokes a little at a thought experiment, looks up at Arin and the way he's dutifully staying quiet. They hold each other's eyes for a long few second before Danny starts tracing over his face, the angles of his profile, the length and curve of his eyelashes, the way his cheeks start heating up with every passing second of this exploration.  
  
When the same fizzing adrenaline strikes him this time, he tries to grab hold of it. Follows it to his brain. Listens to the way it makes his fingers in particular burn and tries to figure out exactly why.  
  
“You okay, man?” Arin asks, low and warm.  
  
He's always liked his voice. Liked listening to him speak, laugh, rap, even sing. Arin's so hard on how he sounds when he sings, but there's a depth to his timbre that Danny envies, that he wants to hear as often as he can. Danny nods, flicks his tongue over his lips before he slides to his knees on the floor. “Can I do something real quick?”  
  
“Uhh-”  
  
“I-I don't really...know what's going on in my head right now, and I'm kind of trying to keep it shut up and locked down while I figure it out, and I just...I'm kind of moving on instinct right now, if that's cool.”  
  
“Are you gonna hit me?”  
  
Danny barks out a laugh, slowly creeps closer on his knees. “Nah, man, I just. I don't know.”  
  
Arin shuts up right around then, and so does Danny, and he hesitates as he lifts his hand. The second the pads of his fingers come in contact with Arin's cheek the burn shoots out of them, fires down his arms, curves around his shoulders and sends a singeing burn straight into his gut.  
  
Arin looks as if he's about to speak, but Danny lets his fingers move of their own accord, traces the line of his cheekbone, and that makes him close his mouth again with a softly shaking breath. Then there's the warmth of the skin around his cheek, the dip from his cheek down to the skin around his lips, and the bump of his chin. Danny does a quick tally of his mental functions, feels that little bit of acid still in the back of his mouth but notes that it's not moving, that he's just...  
  
He thinks he might be enjoying this, but he doesn't think he's ready to try to figure out why.  
  
He scoots until his knees are bumping against Arin's toes and touches his other hand to Arin's shoulder, squeezes a little more than it maybe needs to, but it's okay, it feels like it grounds him as his fingers trail down Arin's neck, tracing the curve of his Adam's apple before he cups the back of his throat, feels the tickling brush of hair over his skin.  
  
“Danny-” Arin murmurs, sounding a little scared and worse for wear.  
  
“Shh.”  
  
There's another push in the back of his mind, another tidal wave that nudges him forward, and he doesn't fight it.  
  
His first thought is that Arin tastes...really good, actually. Not fake, not like energy drinks or mint or anything, not like anything he's tasted before. He likes it. The second is that Arin's going to rip his shirt off if he keeps grabbing fistfuls of it like that, that Dan's lucky he wore one of his baggier t-shirts today if he's gonna knead it like a damn cat. Arin shapes his lips against Danny's, leads a delicate open-and-close that make something spark in Danny, makes him both terrified and hopeful that he'll see what his tongue tastes like too, but no, he doesn't do that, just focuses on the slip and slide of their mouths as they figure out what the best angle for their necks is.  
  
The push of Arin's torso against his when he rises up on his knees is light, more looking for contact than anything, and Danny presses back, thrills at the warmth pouring off of him. There's another terrifying thought - _how would his skin feel against mine?_ \- that's shoved down when Arin loosely drapes an arm around the small of his back, cups one of his narrow hips as he takes a little more control of the kiss, murmurs a sound of contentment against Danny's lips.  
  
He doesn't know how long it's been before his fingers start that tingling, painful burn again, but his brain's still half-ecstatic-half-terrified so he goes with it, presses his fingers into Arin's side and lets them trail downward until they reach the hem of his shirt. He slips his hand under it and smiles a little against Arin's mouth when he hears his breath catch. Any other time, any other partner, he'd already be leading the charge, would be pressing kisses to their neck, whispering _”Do you like that?”_ but this is different, this is...  
  
...there's stubble scratching against his own.  
  
He feels a battle going on inside of him, isn't sure if he's starting to get hard from the adrenaline or the heat pooling inside of him, so he keeps pushing, lets his hand slide between them where it feels the fine hairs just under Arin's belly button and eats up the stuttering gasp that Arin gives, the way he grips at Danny's hip until it'll no doubt bruise the next day. He pushes more and more, feels the butterflies exploding inside of him as he runs over the waistband of his jeans, feels his heart kick into overdrive when he feels the curve of his pelvic bone, tastes the acid that explodes in his throat and the way his breathing legitimately stops the second he cups something hot and heavy and hard-  
  
Danny shoves away from him, suddenly aware that his throat's closed off, that he _isn't breathing,_ that his fucking heart is about to have a goddamn attack, that he-  
  
“Dan, c'mon man, breathe, i-it's okay, just-”  
  
He grabs the first thing he can, the bedspread, nearly pulls it completely off the bed with a pathetic little cry as his muscles jerk and he tries to get himself back under fucking control for one second-  
  
“Shh, it's okay, breathe with me-”  
  
Arin's face is hovering over him and Danny grabs his hand and nods quickly, tries to mirror the deep breaths he's taking, knows he's squeezing so hard that Arin's gotta be in some kind of pain but that he's not moving away, that he's trying to get him to calm down, God fucking bless him...  
  
It's probably seconds, but it feels like hours, how long it takes him to come down from the panic attack. He's laying completely on the floor by the time he's tentatively secure in his own skin again, hands opening and closing like a kneading cat, Arin's hand still right there with his. Arin's sitting against the bed, looking down at him, looking more worried than he's ever seen him.  
  
“Dan-”  
  
“Don't,” he murmurs, shaking his head as he presses his free hand against his eyes, blocks out the light and the ceiling and the whole overwhelming sense that is sight. “Don't even start. You're gonna say you're sorry, and that's bullshit 'cuz you didn't do anything, it was...it was me, okay, man? A-and I'm not sorry, not even remotely, so just shut the fuck up.”  
  
Arin laughs softly, and this time it's nervous but pleased, and it half makes Danny want to hit him and half makes him want to laugh too. “I...I can't believe you just did that.”  
  
“Neither can I, trust me. Jesus. I grabbed your schween, man.”  
  
“You did,” he says with a nod. “You really did. Wow.”  
  
“I fucking grabbed your cock, what the hell is that.”  
  
Arin laughs again, squeezing his hand.  
  
“Like, did I...was that okay, or...?”  
  
“Oh, more than okay, man, I was totally all for that.”  
  
“Shut up,” he says, grinning despite himself, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Just...just shut up.”  
  
They're quiet. Arin absently brushes his thumb over Danny's hand, and he decides he likes that.  
  
“I'm straight,” he murmurs, low and confused.  
  
“Are you now?”  
  
“Yeah. Pretty damn sure I am.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
He doesn't sound upset. Just makes that contemplative hum. Danny finally moves his hand, looks up at him. “But I liked kissing you, didn't I?”  
  
“Did you? Hell if I know.”  
  
“No, I did, I totally did, I-I was...yeah, there was definitely some action going on in my pants at that.”  
  
Arin smiles, but he's studying the wall, isn't looking back down at him.  
  
“But I'm...straight. Or I thought, but...” He tries to pull it apart in his head a little more, stacks Brian and Arin right next to each other, shoulder-to-shoulder, tries to judges how he reacts when he really focuses on them both. The fact that there isn't much of a difference makes something inside of him shake, makes another part incredibly curious.  
  
Arin shrugs. “You like tits and you like kissing me. Whatever. You don't have to label it if you don't wanna.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yeah. I don't mind if I'm your exception, and I don't mind if I'm not the rule or whatever.”  
  
“That's...”  
  
“It's okay, man. Really. If you wanna talk about it later, we can.” He pauses. “That is...if you even want something like this to happen again.”  
  
He thinks about how delicious Arin tasted, how there was a quiet part of him under the panic that shivered with anticipation when he cupped Arin's hardness before. “Yeah, I...I think I might.”  
  
Arin grins from ear to ear and drops his head back against the bed with a sigh.  
  
“Just...one day at a time, right?” he asks softly.  
  
Arin hums, nods. “Yeah, man. But can you promise me something?”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
He smiles down at him, eyes sparkling. “Can we talk about shit? Like, not hide it or whatever, actually go right out and talk about when we're pissed or whatever?”  
  
Danny grins back. “And that's different from how we act now...how?”  
  
“Good point.”  
  
The silence turns long and luxurious, Danny coming back down into himself, Arin quietly stroking his thumb over the skin of his hand. It's nice, he decides. He likes it.  
  
Arin breaks it, of course. “So, since we're talking about shit, is this a bad time to say that Suzy might be into you too?”  
  
“...wait. What?”  
  
“Never mind.”


End file.
